Saturday, November 30, 2013

We are going to do another free online Block of the Month on this blog on the theme of the Civil War for the year 2104.

The theme Threads of Memory refers to the Underground Railroad. Each month you'll get a block named

for an important place in the story of the network that assisted slaves on the road to freedom. We'll explore true stories of people who lived in slavery, escaped on the "Liberty Line" or helped the fugitives.

The twelve blocks will finish to 12" and each is an original pieced design for a star block.

(No applique!)

YOU DON'T SIGN UP. I'll post the block instructions here. But you might want to sign up on the left here

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Saturday, November 9, 2013

I was looking through my Encyclopedia of Applique pattern book a couple of weeks ago and I came across this Shield pattern (my #60.86) from the Ladies Art Company about 1900. You don't see many published patriotic patterns before 1950 or so.

Did anybody ever make a quilt from this pattern?

This is the kind of question my old pattern detective friends Cuesta Benberry and Joyce Gross would have enjoyed.

We'd have spent an afternoon looking through our books and filing cabinets and calling each other. Now things are digital so I looked through my files of 20th-century patriotic quilts. I spent a week looking at shields.

There are many patriotic quilts

from the first half of the century

and some feature shields.

But not the same shield.

Here's a spectacular full-sized example we uncovered

in the Kansas Quilt Project, made during World War I

when you'd guess someone might order

that Shield pattern and make it.

But n-o-o-o

I'd have to say the pattern started few projects.

Although it's not too late.

Last Minute Addition:

48 hours ago I was looking through Stella Rubin's fabulous collection of quilts for sale

It's possible that several of the quilters looking for a shield would look to advertising.

Here are two others

AND YET ANOTHER UPDATE

Karan reminds me that the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park has a quilt in their collection made in the Ladies Art Company shield pattern. She found it in Sue Reich's recent book World War II Quilts, page 47.

Shield Quilt

This rung a small bell in the back, way back of my memory. I did a little internet searching and found a list of quilts in the holdings at Hyde Park with some black and white photos. The caption on this one reads:

"U.S. Shield Quilt Red, white and blue taffeta quilt decorated with shields of the U.S. Designed by Rev John A. Stubbs and made by the young people's department of the Church of God, Cleveland, Tenn. The quilt was sent to FDR by Miss Willard H Boyles, Gen'l Sec. Victory Leaders Band, the Church of God on September 21, 1943."

The article on the Hyde Park quilts is in Joyce Gross's Quilters Journal #19 June 1982, page 10. You can read a PDF of the magazine at the Quilt Index website:

Saturday, November 2, 2013

After two years of war the Morgan women were hungry. Sarah's
56-year-old mother was suffering in the town of Clinton where food had run out.
Confederate brother Gibbes hoped to find them a home in a city far from battles
and poverty. Brother Philip living in Union-occupied New Orleans suggested they
join him there, take an oath of loyalty to the Union and end their ordeal.

Confederate refugees in a Union camp

March 31, 1863, Linwood, East Feliciana Parish

"To be or not to be; that's the question." Whether 'tis
nobler in the Confederacy to suffer the pangs of unappeasable hunger and never-ending
trouble, or to take passage to a Yankee port, and there remaining end them.
Which is best? I am so near daft that I cannot pretend to say; I only know that
I shudder at the thought of going to New Orleans, and that my heart fails me
when I think of the probable consequence to Mother if I allow a mere outward
sign of patriotism to overbalance what should be my first consideration---her
health. For Clinton is growing no better rapidly. To be hungry is there an
everyday occurrence. For ten days mother writes, they have lived off just
hominy enough to keep their bodies and souls from parting, without being able
to procure another article---not even a potato.

Hominy is field corn boiled in an alkali solution such as lye.

Mother is not in a condition to stand such privation; day by day
she grows weaker on her new regimen; I am satisfied that two months more of
danger, difficulties, perplexities, and starvation will lay her in her grave….Lilly
has been obliged to put her children to bed to make them forget they were
supperless, and when she followed their example, could not sleep herself, for
very hunger.

Sarah's mother is in Clinton (the white star).

Sarah is at Linwood Plantation (white circle).

Gibbes has searched Augusta (blue heart) for shelter.

Union-held New Orleans is the blue arrow.

"We have tried in vain to find another home in the Confederacy.
After three days spent in searching Augusta, Gibbes wrote that it was
impossible to find a vacant room for us, as the city was already crowded with
refugees….The question has now resolved itself to whether we shall see mother
die for want of food in Clinton, or by sacrificing an outward show of
patriotism (the inward sentiment cannot be changed), go with her to New
Orleans.…

Sarah Fowler Morgan,

Sarah's mother, in better days.

Just Hominy by Sandi Brothers

12" version
with a 1" frame, set on point

Cutting a 12" Block

A Cut 1 square 4 3/4".

B Cut rectangles 5 1/8" x 2
5/8". Trim one end at a 45 degree angle to make the shape B.

Cut 4 medium
going one direction and 4 dark going the other direction.